I heard a rhumor lately that Shakespear was not just one man. Apprently it would be impossible for one man to think of such things. I also heard a rhumor that he must have been somewhat "not all there in the head" because in order to write about the things he did in such detail, he must have experienced some. Has anyone else heard of this or is my English professor just crazy?

My favorite so far has been The Twelth Night just because it is like a soap opera. The whole time you know what is going on but the characters don't until the very end. I loved it!

There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there about Shakespeare -- some say he didn't really write his plays, that it was one of his contemporaries. I dunno, I say enjoy the plays, and "Shakespeare" is a nicer, more romantic name than "Ben Jonson".
I love Twelfth Night as well, along with Much Ado About Nothing and, well, most of his romantic comedies.

I have to agree about the Unabridged Oxford English Dictonary, not only do they list the language of origin for a word but a history of its usage and meaning across time, with the earliest recorded listing of a word in English literature or prose. I am glad that some one did this...and glad it wasn't me. If a word was first used by the Bard the OED will mention that..

Finally, when I was taking English lit courses in college two different discussions sometimes have been offered about Shakespeare not writing all his plays....First is the suggestion that a non-royal sailor and actor could not have possibly written the plays....and several names have been suggested...but none is likely...still suggesting that the author of Hamlet, Macbeth and most of the plays is a single author...just not Shakespeare..

The other, more plausible thought is that some of Shakespeare's plays were unfinished when he died and some were edited, perhaps drastically when his first collected plays were written....Some of McBeth for example appears missing and parts of the late plays such as Tempest and King Lear may have been added posthumously.

When you think of Shakespeare and his talent, do you appreciate the language or do you appreciate the stories themselves? I am asking this because I have read that the stories are originally folk tales (I do not know a better expression) that he just modified and wrote down, the same way Brother's Grimm wrote down the German folk/fairy tales. So in a way Shakespeare himself would be a ghostwriter.

Whether done by one man or two, Shakespeare's works are simply amazing. In high school we had to read a lot of his plays, and I loved them then. Everyone else hated it and found it hard to understand, and they all thought I was crazy. Since then, I've reread a lot of them too.